The subtle art of workshop-giving

People working on computers at a workshop
"The moment behind the photo workshop," by ABC Open Central Victoria

Over the last couple of years, I’ve given a number of (somewhat) technical workshops for grad students and faculty here at Emory. I love doing it. It’s really gratifying to impart skills, and preparing for workshops gives me a chance to think through and develop my own knowledge in a systematic way.

It’s not that easy, though. Teaching a workshop requires no less skill than teaching any other kind of class, and just as much preparation. It’s also slightly different from, say, leading a discussion section; it requires a different method of instruction and different kinds of preparation.

This semester, one of DiSC’s grad fellows, Franky Abbott, has been helping us perform a comprehensive assessment of our activities, including workshops. With Franky’s help, we’ve been collecting and analyzing survey results, and I now feel I have a much better sense of what works and doesn’t work for students.

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